Today's information technology (IT) environments are becoming increasingly complex and typically require IT managers to concentrate their efforts on maintaining existing applications and existing infrastructures. However, situations arise that require migrating existing servers and software to new IT environments, such as for enhanced services, lower costs, mergers, acquisitions, or other business or technology purposes. The migration process involves migrating physical components, virtual components, application logic, application data, network affinities, etc. from the existing IT environments to the new IT environments.
Industry standard “patterns” encompass proven practices and knowledge that are captured, lab tested, and optimized into repeatable and deployable forms. The patterns typically include declarative descriptions corresponding to different IT areas such as installation, configuration, optimization, and management of systems. Each pattern describes an application's environment in a logical way, such as its components, configurations, relationships, and points of variability.